February 13, 2009

When I’m working in my home office, I typically have my Windows XP laptop on the left hand side of my desk next the rest of my monitors. I’ve always wanted to control the laptop from my main keyboard and mouse without having to hook up a keyboard switch. I find the hardware solution annoying when you are trying to work on both machines essentially at once or when you just want to pick up your laptop and sit somewhere else (lazy I know). When I drag my mouse off the left side of my Linux Desktop I want to control my laptop. When I drag my cursor off the right side of my laptop screen I want to resume working with my Linux Desktop. Essentially I want to seamlessly make my Windows XP Desktop part of my Linux Desktop.

There is an open source project called Synergy that functions exactly this way over your TCP/IP network. The program redirects the mouse and keyboard as you move the mouse off the edge of a screen. Synergy also merges the clipboards on each system into one, allowing you to copy-and-paste between systems. Handy for copying stuff out of e-mail!

Like all good open source projects the program works on any combination of Linux, Windows XP and MAC OS X 10.2 and higher.

Enjoy!

Charles Angione

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